History MyHeritage

1 history

1.1 2003–2007: foundation , years
1.2 2008–2012: acquisitions , expansion
1.3 2013–present: partnerships, further growth, , beyond

history
2003–2007: foundation , years

original myheritage office in village of bnei atarot, israel

myheritage founded in 2003 gilad japhet (who continues serve company s ceo). japhet started company living room in moshav of bnei atarot, israel. long time, company s headquarters located in family farmhouse in bnei atarot. in infancy, myheritage self-funded had received funds angel investors 2005. switched free service freemium business model.

early on, myheritage required users upload genealogical information desktop software. information viewed online, not altered. in 2006, myheritage introduced new features including facial recognition software recognized facial features database of photographs link individuals together. in december 2006, company acquired pearl street software creator of family tree software (family tree legends) , family tree submission site (gencircles) on 160 million profiles , 400 million public records.

by 2007, myheritage had 150,000 family trees, 180 million people profiles, 100 million photos, , 17.2 million users worldwide. service available in 17 languages. company began offering new web-based feature allowed users upload genealogical information directly myheritage site. myheritage had received total of $9 million in investor funding, half of had come accel.

2008–2012: acquisitions , expansion

myheritage headquarters in or yehuda, israel

in 2008, myheritage raised $15 million investment group including index ventures , accel. @ time, website had grown 260 million people profiles, 25 million users, 230 million photos, , 25 supported languages. after securing funding, myheritage acquired kindo, uk-based family tree building service. in 2009, company released new version of free genealogy software, family tree builder, included ability sync between software , website.

in 2010, company acquired germany-based osn group, family tree website network 7 genealogy sites under name. websites in osn network included verwandt.de in germany, moikrewni.pl in poland, , dynastree.com in united states. acquisition provided myheritage several new features (including coats of arms, family tree merging, , option venture mobile applications) , total of 540 million people profiles, 47 million active users, , 13 million family trees. in 2011, numbers increased 760 million people profiles , 56 million users after myheritage acquired poland-based bliscy.pl, genealogy website.

other 2011 acquisitions included dutch family network, zooof; backupmytree, backup service designed protect 9 terabytes of offline family history data; , familylink, developer of family history content sites , owner of large database of historical records (worldvitalrecords.com, included census, birth, death, , marriage records along archive of historical newspapers). end of 2011, myheritage had 60 million users, 900 million people profiles, 21 million family trees, , available in 38 different languages. company released first version of mobile app ios , android devices.

in 2012, myheritage surpassed 1 billion people profiles , launched several new features including supersearch, search engine billions of historical records, , record matching, technology automatically compares myheritage s historical records profiles on site , alerts users whenever match found relative in family tree.

in november 2012, myheritage acquired 1 of primary competitors, geni.com. company kept of geni s employees , operated company separate brand in los angeles, california and, of 2016, myheritage , geni still separate. founded david sacks in 2007, geni genealogy website goal of creating family tree of whole world (whereas myheritage focuses on records , collecting non-merged individual family trees). acquisition added 7 million new users myheritage, bringing total number of members 72 million. @ time, myheritage had 27 million family trees , 1.5 billion profiles , available in 40 languages. in addition acquisition of geni, myheritage raised $25 million in funding round led bessemer venture partners.

2013–present: partnerships, further growth, , beyond

in 2013, myheritage entered strategic partnership allow familysearch use technologies allow users find ancestors more easily. @ time of deal, myheritage had 75 million registered users , 1.6 billion people profiles. company gained access united states census records 1790 1940. in april 2013, myheritage released family tree builder 7.0 included new features sync, unicode, , record matches. myheritage introduced web feature called record detective automatically makes connections between different historical records.

in 2014, myheritage announced partnerships , collaborations numerous companies , entities. in february 2014, company partnered billiongraves digitize , document graves , cemeteries worldwide. in october 2014, company partnered ebsco information services provide educational institutions (libraries, universities, etc.) free access myheritage s database of historical records. in december 2014, myheritage entered agreement danish national archives index census , parish records 1646 1930 (a total of around 120 million records). company surpassed 5 billion historical records in database in 2014 , launched instant discoveries feature, enables users add whole branches of relatives family tree @ once.

in 2015, myheritage reached 6.3 billion historical records, 80 million registered users, , availability in 42 languages. released global name translation technology automatically translates names different languages make searching ancestors more efficient.

in march 2016, employees of myheritage recorded , preserved family history of remote peoples in highlands region of papua new guinea.